Firstly, an apology. This blog is late, and don’t I know it! I could offer a variety of excuses regarding moving house, getting a job and all that jazz, but at the end of the day it is, at least, out before the next NEC meeting, which has got to be worth something. Plus the only other report of the meeting I’ve seen thus far has been Sofie’s. This report will likely bear some significant similarity to my fellow ENS member’s, not least because we made a point of comparing notes immediately after the end of the meeting.

For those of you who were following my reports from NEC meetings as an observer from the Areas in my capacity as WMANUS Convenor (Training & Development), this version and approach will necessarily be different, because of the changed nature of my relationship with the meeting; now I’m a voting member of the Committee, it gets a little harder to keep track of things and engage fully with the meeting. In future, I’m going to make sure I sit in such a position that I have a clear view of the rest of the NEC so I can more accurately report how people voted. I made the mistake at being at one end of the “U” shape we ended up sitting in, which made 100% certainty of people’s votes difficult at times. Rather than trying to guess, I’ve not included people where I was unsure of their stance.

Anyway, to begin with I ought to say that this meeting was a lot better than any I attended as an observer last year. The attitude was less needlessly confrontational, and overall the meeting was a lot more positive and productive. Long may it last!

Present were: Colleen Dowdall, Gemma Tumelty, Richard Angell, Kat Stark, Wes Streeting, James Alexander, Scott Cuthbertson, Claire Anderson, Sam Lebens, Richard “Bubble” Budden, Issahaku Kotomah, George Woods, Ruqayyah Collector, Jamie McIndo, Stephen Brown, Dave Charlesworth, Louise Sweeney, Ama Uzowuru, Alex Kemp, Sofie Buckland, Joe Rukin and I.

We had apologies from: Jamal El-Shayyal, Steven Findlay, Veronica King, Ellie Russell (who arrived later), and Suzie Wylie. That accounts for all 27 of the NEC. We didn’t quite have a full complement of observers, sadly. This is probably because it’s outside of term time and people are on holidays, at home in remote regions and other such things.

At the start of the meeting, Gemma Tumelty clarified that the role of observers was not to take part in debate, except insofar as to report information from their region. There was some dissent on this, mostly from observers and former observers, but neither did anyone formally raise an objection and so this was the case for the whole meeting. On reflection, I should probably have said something, given that I certainly took advantage of the vagueness of the rules when I was an Areas observer from WMANUS, despite occasional attempts by last year’s Labour Students bloc to prevent observers from having an input into decisions. Still, observers did still manage to have an input into the debates later, where appropriate, so this is perhaps no bad thing. Time will tell. As ever, if you have a view on this either way, please email me.

Management Team Report

The first item of business, delivered jointly by Gemma Tumelty and a member of staff, covered a number of topics. The basic idea was to demonstrate the accountability of the new-style Management Team (consisting of the employed Directors and the six UK full-timers) to the NEC as a whole, and I think it worked quite well as an exercise, although I’d question what recourse the NEC would have if they wanted to reverse a decision of the Management Team.

The first issue was on whether to allow ULU (University of London Union) to sell NUS Extra cards. Management Team had decided not to allow ULU to do this, on the grounds that while ULU is affiliated to NUS, some of the Students’ Unions affiliated to ULU are not NUS members and this would allow students at those unions to purchase Extra cards. The NEC agreed with this decision with little or no dissent.

There was a report on NUS staffing. The NEC asked that future statistic include ethnic minority and disability monitoring to ensure that we are as representative as possible.

Terms of reference: basically, there aren’t any. This job has been delegated to a new member of staff with experience of such matters.

Management Accounts: are not yet at a sign-off stage. NUS is looking at an overspend of approximately £150,000 for 2005/2006, but a £40,000 surplus for 2006/2007, which is a welcome reversal of the trend of previous years, and testament to the hard work of our staff and our National Treasurer, the confusingly-named Joe Rukin. I’m already getting emails intended for him. Perhaps it’s a hint…

Anyway, next up was an update on the NUS Extra card project. NUS and NUSSL have secured a further 50 suppliers to the card, with 50,000 more cards ordered in advance than we predicted. This in, in general terms, a success so far. Interestingly, 200,000 more “democracy” cards have been ordered this year compared to last year – and last year they included a discount function!

NUSTV: there is, and long has been, talk of NUS operating a TV station of some sort. As and when there are fuller details to report, I shall do.

Child protection: there was some dispute over the terminology (“vulnerable adults”) used in this item, which largely related to our legal liability if we provide advice on such issues. We are consulting with the NSPCC to check our position. We were also reminded that child protection issues are different in Scotland because of the different legislative processes.

Relationship with Endsleigh: basically, the message was that Endsleigh don’t give us anything they don’t have to. We get a small commission and a dividend from our shares, but possibly less than other companies give to their shareholders. NUS receive no special perks from Endsleigh, and it’s likely that they’ll try to negotiate what they do give us down this year, which would be less than ideal. Serious concerns were also raised over potential plans for Endsleigh to offer fees insurance, basically profiting off the top-up fees system. Needless to say, the NEC as a whole was against this idea.

Operational plan: At 88 pages, I couldn’t make my way through it in time for the meeting, and I enjoy this kind of thing. With that in mind, I’d question exactly how clear a commitment to accountability it truly is, although I’m certain it was well intentioned and contains lots of good stuff. Once I’ve waded through it, I’ll post a summary and critique, after passing my thoughts onto relevant NEC and staff.

Priority Campaign Update

It’s coming along nicely, thank you. Bring your entire Students’ Union to the demonstration in London on Sunday October 29^th! The key this year is to involve people right from the start. Keep an eye on Wes and Gemma’s blogs for more details.

Budgets

The budget code manual has been revised and considerably simplified this year, which finally allows us to keep track of our finances reliably. You rather wonder why no one thought of this before…

As I said above, we’re looking at a profit of £39k for 2006/07, dependent on minimising unnecessary expenditure, maximising collection of affiliation fees, and NUS Extra going well. The subject of this increased prosperity being partially diverted into an increased salary for liberation officers was raised. I did the decent thing and didn’t mention my rather selfish point from my previous blog (of which more, no doubt, in a future post).

Another interesting point to come up was that full-timers’ travel to other Zones or general events doesn’t come out of their budget, but out of the Zone/whatever budget, whereas Block travel comes out of the appropriate Zone and is then recharged to the individual Block member’s travel budget. I can’t quite convince myself that that’s not grossly unfair, and quite possibly exemplary of some more of the barriers part-time officers face.

NUSSL Board responsibility

The short version: NUS sends three NEC members and the National Director to sit as Directors on the Board of NUS Services, Ltd. (NUSSL). By convention, these three NEC members have been the National President, a Block member, and the National Treasurer, who has been Chair of the Board. This year, however, after various politicking and machinations and the like, a student member of the Board stood for election as Chair against the National Treasurer, and won. Mr. Rukin saw this as a vote of no confidence, and thus resigned his Board responsibility.

Gemma thus outlined that we needed to send another NEC member in place of Joe, and that the logical choice was Stephen Brown, National Secretary – he’s a full-timer with an organisational focus, after all. We were asked (and this is verbatim, as I recall) to rubberstamp his appointment to the Board.

Joe Rukin read a lengthy and poignant statement about his situation and experience, which I believe you can find on his blog. Specifically, he noted that Kat Fletcher (previous NUS National President) had perceived and argued that the NUS National Treasurer being NUSSL Chair was a conflict of interest.

Despite Joe saying in his statement that he wasn’t nominating himself for Board responsibility, I felt compelled to nominate him in that capacity. I have a number of reasons for this, not least of which is a simple commitment to democracy: Conference had voted for Joe on the understanding that he would be NUSSL Chair. His manifesto had included it. While I totally empathise with his current situation, and respect the logic behind Gemma’s suggestion of Stephen as replacement, I didn’t feel comfortable with letting it proceed unchallenged.

After a five-minute break, necessitated in part by my unexpected disruption of a fait accompli, Joe Rukin decided not to accept my nomination, we all voted to appoint Stephen, and the meeting continued.

My suspicion of NUSSL’s previous interventions into NUS democracy is well documented. The rumours I’ve heard that they are trying to change their constitution so as to be able to ignore NUS policy, coupled with the NUS Treasurer not being Chair of NUSSL this year, fills me with quite an unpleasant sense of dread that I’m witnessing the back-door privatisation of NUS services. If you’ve got any rays of hope to offer, please get in touch!

NUS Extra update

There wasn’t a lot more information here beyond what we’d already had in the management update, except a discussion over the legitimacy of including a discount from a company offering to “mark” academic work and (for an additional fee) suggest improvements. Concerned that this could easily constitute plagiarism in many institutions’ eyes, we agreed to exclude this firm from the Extra discount scheme.

MOTIONS

The fabled main event…

Guidance for FE Colleges on tackling hate crime and intolerance.

Submitted by: Ellie Russell and Stephen Brown

Supported by: Alex Kemp, Veronica King, Dave Charlesworth, Gemma Tumelty, Joe Rukin

Ellie spoke in favour, and the motion passed unanimously.

Disability Abuse

Submitted by: Alex Kemp

Supported by: Stephen Brown, Gemma Tumelty, Louise Sweeney, Dave Charlesworth, and Ama Uzowuru.

Alex spoke in favour, and the motion passed unanimously.

Work With The Aegis Trust

Submitted by:Wes Streeting, Kat Stark, Steven Findlay, Scott Cuthbertson, Richard Angell, James Alexander and Gemma Tumelty.

Richard Angell spoke in favour, with Sam Lebens adding that we should be sure to be active participants. The motion passed unanimously.

Green Books

Submitted by: Dave Charlesworth

Supported by: Stephen Brown, Gemma Tumelty, Suzie Wylie

Dave spoke in favour of this motion, which passed unanimously. I would have supported it, but I was in Scarborough on a kung fu course across the deadline and had no computer access.

Escalation Of Violence In The Middle East

Submitted by: Stephen Brown, Gemma Tumelty, Alex Kemp, Ama Uzowuru, Dave Charlesworth and Louise Sweeney

This motion was where the controversy started. My account is going to be somewhat more meticulous than Ms. Buckland’s, I suspect, because of my fondness for taking detailed notes. I figure it aids accountability.

Stephen Brown spoke in favour of this motion, and we then went onto the amendments. First were the two from NOLS (at the time, Wes Streeting, Kat Stark, James Alexander, Scott Cuthbertson, Richard Angell and Stephen Findlay). Criticising the UK Government for being too close to the US on this issue, Wes Streeting spoke to an amendment to replace “The UK Government has basically done nothing to end the crisis” with a lot of text cannibalised from the motion Sofie and I proposed on the subject. George Woods spoke against the Labour Students amendment, but ultimately it passed, supported by Labour Students, the OIs (who proposed the original motion), Sam Lebens and Ellie Russell, and opposed by Sofie and I, George and Ruqayyah.

The next Labour Students amendment sought to “bulk out” a resolves and add the word “sustainable.” Let’s be clear about this; no one was in favour of a ceasefire that lasted only five minutes, and of course I have a particular interest in sustainability in all things, but the way the discussion went seemed to polarise the NEC between those in favour of a sustainable ceasefire and those, like myself, who wanted us to call for an immediate ceasefire. The truth is that an immediate and sustainable ceasefire would have been the best solution all round.

Anyway, Joe Rukin moved parts to remove “by terrorists” from the sentence “condemn continuing attacks by terrorists on Israeli citizens,” with Sam Lebens speaking against. Joe Rukin, Ruqayyah and George all voted in favour of these parts, with everyone else voting against except for Jamie McIndo, Kotomah, Sofie and I, who abstained.

On the amendment as a whole, only Ruqayyah, George and Kotomah voted against; Sofie and I were hopeful that the discussions around the need to call for an immediate ceasefire would mean that when our motion on the subject was discussed, we could use this to get that motion passed as well, thus ensuring that we would call for an immediate and sustainable ceasefire.

Anyway, the next amendment for discussion was from Sofie and I. Firstly, it sought to remove the call for a UN Peacekeeping Force (more Sofie’s bugbear than mine, as I put a lot of stock in the importance of names), and secondly aimed to strengthen our views on a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine situation, and remove the (admittedly inadvertent) reference to free trade. Sofie spoke to the amendment, with Wes Streeting speaking against. Parts were moved to take the two sections separately, with only Sofie, George Woods and I voting to delete the call for a UN Peacekeeping Force. As regards the second half of our amendment, Labour Students voted against, with Sofie, George, Kotomah, Ruqayyah, Joe Rukin and I in favour amongst a sea of abstention, meaning that the second part of our amendment passed. A good but surprising result!

Next was Sam Lebens’ amendment on Hezbollah. In truth, it seemed to me more like an entire motion in itself, but the content was reasonable. Sam Lebens spoke in favour of it, with Sofie taking minor parts, which were opposed by Wes Streeting. Only George, Ruqayyah and Sofie voted in favour of those parts, with Joe Rukin, Kotomah, and I in abstention. Ruqayyah then moved parts on Resolves 2, which was to mandate her and Sam Lebens to write to the Respect party condemning George Galloway’s support for Hezbollah. Kotomah, George and Ruqayyah voted for these parts, with Joe Rukin, Jamie McIndo and Ellie Russell abstaining.

Her parts having fallen, Ruqayyah then spoke against the amendment, supported at the vote by George Woods and Kotomah. With the amendment having passed, we moved onto the vote on the motion as a whole. George, Ruqayyah and Kotomah voted against the motion, while Sofie and Jamie McIndo abstained.

Stop The War On Lebanon

Submitted by: Sofie Buckland, me

After another short break, we moved onto discussing Sofie’s and my motion on the situation in Lebanon. Sofie spoke to the motion, with George Woods moving parts on Believes 1 to remove “exposes the expansionist motivations of its government.” Only George and Ruqayyah voted in favour of these parts, with Kotomah in abstention, and so they remained for a split second, before Sam Lebens moved parts to remove the whole of Believes 1, which references “Israel’s massively disproportionate reaction to the kidnapping of the soldiers.” Labour Students, Claire Anderson, Sam Lebens and Joe Rukin voted in favour of these parts, with Sofie, George, Ruqayyah, Kotomah, Bubble and I against, meaning that this whole section was removed. After that, and despite the fact that much of the text of the motion was already passed as an amendment to the previous motion – the only real point of difference now being our motion’s call for an immediate ceasefire – the vote was against the motion as a whole. While Sofie, Alex Kemp, Dave Charlesworth, Kotomah and I voted in favour, Labour Students, Stephen Brown and Bubble’s opposition meant that the NEC did not agree our policy of calling for an immediate sustainable ceasefire.

Motion to support the national Stop the War demonstration

Submitted by: Suzie Wylie

As Suzie was away and had sent her apologies, there was no formal speech in favour. Please note that, had I had better email access (again, I was in Scarborough over the deadline) I would have supported this motion. Anyway, the debate moved straight onto the amendment that Sofie and I had submitted, which an unlikely coalition of Student Broad Left (George Woods and Ruqayyah Collector) and Labour Students (at that time, Wes Streeting, Kat Stark, Richard Angell, Scott Cuthbertson and James Alexander) voted against. Nevertheless, the amendments passed.

Sam Lebens then proposed parts on Further Believes 7, so that it went from “In response to Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Lebanon, Blair has distinguished and isolated himself in the international community for echoing Bush in refusing to condemn the bombings or call for a ceasefire” to “In Lebanon, Blair has distinguished and isolated…” etc. George Woods spoke against this alteration. When it came to the vote, George, Ruqayyah and Kotomah voted against the parts, with Ellie Russell and Stephen Brown in abstention and everyone else, myself included, in favour. My reasons were pragmatic; it was my hope that this change would make the motion more likely to pass.

At this point, I spoke in favour of the motion as it stood, as I was conscious that its success was in the balance. When it came to the vote, only George Woods, Ruqayyah Collector, Issahaku Kotomah, Joe Rukin, Sofie Buckland and I were in favour, and thus the motion was voted down.

One Water

Submitted by:Stephen Brown and Ama Uzowuru

Supported by: Gemma Tumelty, Louise Sweeney, Alex Kemp and Dave Charlesworth.

Stephen Brown spoke in favour.

Sofie Buckland spoke in favour of her amendment on the topic of privatisation, and Ama Uzowuru spoke against. The amendment fell, with me in abstention (I agree with the principle but thought this was the wrong way to get policy on it).

The unamended motion passed.

Agenda For Africa

Submitted by: Wes Streeting, Steven Findlay, Sam Lebens, Kat Stark, Scott Cuthbertson, Richard Angell and James Alexander

Wes spoke in favour, and it passed unanimously.

Keep Our NHS Public!

Submitted by: Sofie Buckland, me

I spoke in favour of this motion, and Wes Streeting spoke against. The motion passed, with Claire Anderson, Sam Lebens and the five-strong Labour Students bloc voting against.

Safeguarding the right to a fair trial

Submitted by: Ama Uzowuru

Supported by: Stephen Brown, Gemma Tumelty, Louise Sweeney, Dave Charlesworth, Alex Kemp, Richard Budden, Ellie Russell, Veronica King, Sam Lebens, and me.

Ama spoke in favour, and the motion passed unanimously.

Building a greener NUS

Submitted by: Dave Charlesworth and me

Supported by: Gemma Tumelty, Suzie Wylie

I spoke on the motion, which passed unanimously.

Liberty affiliation

Submitted by: Veronica King

Supported by: Ellie Russell, Richard Budden, Ruqayyah Collector, Ama Uzowuru and me

As Veronica wasn’t at the meeting, I spoke on the motion, which passed unanimously (after some questions over where the money would come from).

Support for student nurses

Submitted by: Sofie Buckland and I

I was going to speak on this motion, but there was some confusion over our existing policy, based on the suspicions of another NEC members. We agreed to remit the motion (basically saying that student nurses should be paid a salary, as they are rarely if ever as supernumerary as they are supposed to be) to the next motion. However, I’m deeply concerned that the NEC (myself included) are unable to locate policy from previous Annual Conferences; policy which is, by definition, still extant. While we’re only required to report on our progress on the policy passed at the most recent Conference, we are still bound by policy for five years after it’s decided. We definitely need to do something to make our policy more visible and accessible; if it’s on the website, for example, I certainly can’t find it.

That was the end of the meeting, which was, by and large, fairly productive, albeit not without controversy and decisions I don’t necessarily agree with. That said, as an NEC member I am, of course, bound by policy and will take all our policies forward as appropriate, even as I campaign to change them.